


Andraste's Grace

by happywitch416



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Darktown (Dragon Age), F/M, Implied Mass Death, The Chantry (Dragon Age), The Taint (Dragon Age), abandoned hospital, dark water, haunted, running away from scary things in the dark, suspicious architecture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-11 21:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21228419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happywitch416/pseuds/happywitch416
Summary: Hawke and Anders take a trip to Andraste's Grace Charity Hospital, the once crown of the Chantry's work in Kirkwall. After a massive influx of the taint after someone with the Blight became a patient, the place was shut down. Anders is hoping for some free supplies among the dust and cobwebs to help fund his clinic without raising more suspicions. Perhaps it is best to let the dead lie in peace with their stuff.





	Andraste's Grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eravalefantasy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eravalefantasy/gifts).

"Where are we going exactly?" Hawke asked, turning about in circles as they walked. Some parts of Darktown you could almost forget the soul-crushing poverty that reigned. This area was not one of them

.  
"Andraste's Grace Hospital, the former crown of the Chantry's charity work in Kirkwall." Anders answered, staring resolutely ahead, marking the streets until they needed to turn and head north to the edge of the city.

  
Hawke stopped walking, lurching to the moonlit center of the road in case someone threw anything out a window. Or if the shutters fell off when they did. "At night?"

  
Anders turned and gave her a bemused grin. "When else do I have time to duck the templars and my patients?"

  
She grabbed his shoulder as he went to start forward again, steering him to face her. "Anders, it's haunted. No one goes there."

  
"Love, I will hold your hand the entire time." He laced his fingers through hers and squeezed before tugging her along. "Besides, we will be in and out before you know it."

  
"But why?" She whined as they turned down another road.

  
"Free supplies hopefully. This is it."They stared up at the building. The roof was caved in one side. The full moon did little to lighten the dark gaping windows or to lessen the feeling that the decrepit building was watching them. And waiting.

Hawke sighed heavily before pushing the iron gate open. "You are lucky I love you."

  
Anders gave her a grin and brushed a kiss against her cheek. "Yes, I am." He led the way up the crumbling steps before gingerly pushing open the door. It shrieked on its hinges and they both winced.

  
"They probably heard that at the Circle." Hawke tsked. She let the door fall closed behind them, the hinges barely whispering this time. She shivered as Anders called light to the end of his staff, illuminating what had once been a waiting room. Broken chairs littered the floor, covered in dirt and leaves blown through the broken windows. She turned slowly on the spot. The wood counter was long cracked, the crevice filled with dust and cobwebs. "How long as this place been empty?"

  
Anders was already looking through the drawers in the counter, but they were long emptied of their contents. "During the Blight, before Kirkwall set so many regulations against the refugees. From what I've heard." His nose curled in disgust when he opened the storage closet, mops and brooms stuck to the walls with grim. "They quarantined anyone who was sick. Most left rather quickly, seasickness doesn't last much past the sea, and a poor diet is easily corrected. But."

  
"They got someone with the Blight." She finished for him.

  
He nodded. "They didn't realize until it was too late, and it had spread to most of the other patients and sisters. Then they locked the doors and waited for the screams to end." She stared at him in open horror and he sighed. "It was not the wisest of medical decisions but the fear of it spreading to the rest of Kirkwall was far louder than anyone who spoke of temperance."

  
"Like keeping them at the docks was better?" She followed him into the hallway and ignored how deep the darkness was past the light. She rubbed her arms trying to rid herself of the crawling feeling.

  
"Did you ever see anyone who was sick there?" She didn't answer, didn't have to. They had peered at them all too close and her mother had only been sick with grief. The moonlight shone in illuminating a set of cabinets. The glass was broken along the sill, she tried not to think of how it was broken, with no glass on the inside, like something got out. But the heavy leaded stained glass was whole with its depiction of Andraste burning at the pyre. The red flames looked more like blood. She couldn't decide if Andraste was rising from the blood or sinking into it, nor did she want to consider which was worse.

  
Anders opened several of the small cabinet doors, barely a foot across, peering into their dusty depths. Hawke did her best not grin when he jumped at the sound of her voice at his shoulder. "What do you think these were for? They are too deep to make good storage."

  
He tugged on the slatted bottom and they both took a step back when it slid out smoothly. They stared at it a moment before Anders took a deep breath and shoved it back into place. "I think. I think we were just looking at the child morgue."

  
Hawke vehemently shook her head, hard enough her braid whipped around to smack her in the face. "No."

  
"Well whatever was there, it's gone now." He opened and closed several more.

  
"Maybe it was for chamber pots that were not in use."

  
Anders chuckled, kicking the last one back shut. "Or snacks, they kept the trays lined up in there, or the kitchen is in the next room and they just slide them through."

  
Hawke's grin was still a little pale when he squeezed her hand. "That would be a terrible mistake to make."

  
"Yes, nothing says snack time like chamber pots and cadavers." She turned green and glared at him when he laughed. "Medicine makes for dark humor, Hawke."

  
"I am not touching anything in this place." She said primly sticking her nose in the air. "Surely we can just buy what you need? Smuggle it from the estate to your clinic?"

  
"And how would you explain purchasing all those supplies?"

  
She thought a moment, their boots disturbing the dust as the floor creaked beneath them. "Bethany and I like to brawl in our spare time. We'll take up challenging the other noble families."

  
"Promise your hand in marriage to the first man to best you?"

  
She snorted. "Have you seen them? I'd have to let a 900-year-old man beat me." Her smile warmed at his laugh and she reached out to squeeze his hand.

  
The next several rooms were more of the same, empty except for dust and cobwebs. "I think this place is so empty the spiders have even left." She batted the floating web until it stuck to the door frame. She stopped in her tracks. "By the Maker."

  
This room was the largest they had found, a sunken amphitheater with rows upon rows of meticulously clean seats. "This is unusual." Anders gently took the first step down the stairs.

  
Hawke peered at the dim ceiling; feet firmly planted on the top of the stairs. "Are those Tevene statues?"

  
Anders followed her gaze upward and cast a second ball of mage light towards the ceiling. The flickering statues leered at them in grotesque laughter. "I don't think the Chantry built this." He cast another ball into the center of the floor. What should have been the floor. "Is that water?"

  
The circular pool took up more than half of the floor, leaving a ledge just wide enough to navigate around it. Hawke was past him before he could stop her, and she was peering down into the pool. "It smells like the sea?" She turned her gaze to him as he joined her by it, walking around to the other side. He shrugged, focusing more on the hair standing on his neck and arms, the cold grasp on his heart, willing himself to breathe. A deep breath verified her claim. It smelled like seawater and blood.

Justice seared across his mind, blinding him as he caught a glimpse of something moving in the depths. "Run." He ordered, taking several leaps up the stairs. But when Anders realized she wasn't behind him, he won out over Justice's will and turned back to her. Inky blackness rose from the water, caressing and crooning as Hawke leaned forward. He grabbed her, a hard yank pulling her into him and away from the water. The darkness settled back into the pool, waiting.

  
Hawke shook her head slowly. "Can't you hear it, Anders? Such a beautiful song." Her eyes were unfocused and hazy. "Like a Chantry choir in a single voice."

  
He felt the prickling along his skin but listened hard. It was all too familiar to him, the taint in his blood firing to its call. So familiar yet he knew it was not right, not quite, just an awful mimicry. He grits his teeth and drags her up the stairs. Something began to howl, and he felt Justice once again take hold but this time in the companionship they had held for years, not the Anders obliterating rage of late.

  
Hawke finally came to her senses as the door slammed shut before them. She gave herself a hard shake and flicked the lockpicks from her belt, going to one knee as she cursed the lock. Neither of them acknowledges the singing as it grows louder, closer. Neither of them looked back. "Here." Anders gruffly pulled her back and sent magic splintering through the door. A wail took up behind them, drowning out the song with its wretchedness, the wind catching at their heels as they sprinted down the hallway, guided only by Justice's glow. Doors swung open trying to block their way, long-abandoned wheelchairs and gurneys flew into their path. Hawke went sailing over the counter and shoved open the door. Holding it open until Anders joined her and they sprinted through. They didn't wait for it to shut, careening across the broken cobblestones and through the iron gate.

  
Hawke slammed it shut behind them, breathing heavily and staring at the still open, writhing, screaming door. After what felt like hours it slammed shut on its own, thrown by an unseen force so hard into its frame it shook, roof crumbling further in. The song began again while it waited, a stalemate this time.

  
She wound her fingers through his and gently pulled him away, both walking backward until it passed from their sight. Hawke could feel the song in her mind, like a sticky ooze as she finally turned towards the rest of Darktown. "Home sweet home?"

  
"Sounds wonderful." Anders answered tightening his hold on her. His eyes still blazed but the worry in his features reassured her it was only Anders. He gave a short chuckle. "I'll take you up on your offer of buying supplies."

  
She nodded, her grin not as strong as she wanted, before glancing behind them before slowing to a stop. "We should burn that place to the ground."

  
"I vote we never return. Send the guard to do it."

  
She chuckled and let herself be drug along. "Aveline can shame it into burning itself down."

  
They ended the night in Hawke's bed with a few too many mugs on the nightstand and Dog happily at their feet while a roaring fire warmed them. Hawke had drawn the curtains feeling eyes staring at them but otherwise, they settled comfortably into each other's arms. Yet neither of them could sleep, the mournful haunting song echoing in their minds even as the sun began to shine.


End file.
